KABUL (AFP) — President Hamid Karzai congratulated Barack Obama on his White House victory Wednesday but urged him to end mounting civilian casualties in the US-led "war on terror" in Afghanistan.
The number of civilians being killed in strikes by US-led forces had caused tensions between Afghanistan and the previous US administration, Karzai told reporters at press conference to congratulate Obama on his victory.
As he spoke, the US military said it was investigating new claims that several civilians had been killed in air strikes in the southern province of Kandahar that had hit a wedding party on Tuesday.
"My first demand from the US president, when he takes office, would be to end civilian casualties in Afghanistan and take the war to places where there are terrorist nests and training centres," Karzai told a press briefing.
Karzai has long called for more focus on militant sanctuaries in neighbouring Pakistan which he says send fighters across the border into Afghanistan, where insurgent attacks are on the rise.
The president said his government had a good relationship with Washington but "our basic problem, which caused tensions between us a while ago, is the civilian casualties."
Karzai has made several emotional speeches calling on US and NATO-led forces operating against extremist insurgents in Afghanistan to take more care to avoid harm to ordinary people.
Mounting civilian casualties in the war are tarnishing the image of the international forces and the government as they try to win popular support for the effort against militants.
Karzai also reiterated that the new US administration should change strategy in the "war on terror", in which international forces now numbering 70,000 have failed to crush an insurgency by Taliban and other militants.
"Our demand is the repetition of demands we have had since long ago and that is a change of the strategy of the war against terrorism," he said.
"The 'war on terror' cannot be fought in Afghan villages... Afghanistan is the victim of terrorism," Karzai said.
The "'war on terror' should be directed to its nests and its training centres," he said, referring to militant hideouts in the tribal areas of neighbouring Pakistan.
Karzai, whose fragile government relies on US military and development aid, congratulated Obama on his win at the polls, saying his election had taken the world into a "new era."
"The election of Senator Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States has taken the American people and the rest of the world with them into a new era -- an era where race, colour and ethnicity, I hope, will also disappear... in politics in the rest of the world," he said.
He said he hoped that Afghanistan, divided along ethnic lines after decades of bitter conflict, and other countries riven by war and suffering, could one day see a similar event.
"I hope we and the rest of the world, in particular in our own country Afghanistan, follow in the same footsteps," he said.
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